Disney Addresses Club Penguin Island Criticism

Disney have directly responded to reviews criticising Club Penguin Island, specifically those saying they the classic game shouldn’t have closed and the criticism on membership.

The first response is exactly what the community has been trying to say:

Club Penguin had to close. The technology was getting old and those who say otherwise are quite frankly talking about things they don’t understand. But at the same time, the team can now make Club Penguin Island as good, even better, than the classic version!

Then we get to the second response…now I’ve scrolled through a bunch of comments and not once did they consider calling the complaints of non-members being too restricted feedback.

I plan to make a whole post on this in two weeks as I’m on holiday now, but this isn’t good for players who aren’t happy about the restriction of non-members. Where I stand is that I am all for Disney’s decision, the game will grow in updates and everything will be okay…if non-members get to do more.

As for #NotNyClubPenguin, Megg addressed this in the most awesome way on Twitter:

I don’t want to steal too much from this post because I really would like to get my thoughts down, maybe even in a format you’re not expecting. It’s good Disney themselves are responding to reviews. However, I would like them to focus on considering the restriction of non-members as feedback.

It’s time for Club Penguin Island to reveal that some party supplies will be for non-members this month. It’s important to make the audience happy. Don’t get me wrong, this is our island. It’s an incredible game and I completely understand why classic Club Penguin closed, but Lance Priebe (the creator of Club Penguin) summed it up perfectly.

@Seth4564TI reviews are what people think of it. Each review should be taken seriously.

The problem isn’t “oh, this is replacing the original”. The problem is that they’re disregarding the original. If Club Penguin Island came out first, then it’d be different. But as a continuation, you have to include popular features from which it’s based.

And that’s the problem. I agree Club Penguin needed a major update like this, but as a game based off Club Penguin, using it’s name, and intending to continue the franchise and replace it, you have to include features from it. This is one of the main reason Club Penguin Island has so many negative reviews, it completely disregards the original.

So why doesn’t it share any of the features from Club Penguin? That’s the problem, it’s continuing the franchise without containing any of what made the original so popular. These are features that should exist at launch, but instead we’re not seeing any of it.
Yes, it needed a major update. It was using the same technology it started with 11 years ago, a deprecated and dying technology. But they come out with that much-needed update, and this is what comes of it?
It may not be as bad as many people say it is, but it’s definitely not at a full-release state. We’re still waiting for many features that should already be here. Features that made the original popular, even among the unpopular changes.

Maybe that’s true. In any case, at least they appear to be planning to release some of these features. It just comes out as completely disregarding the original when this is what comes of the full release.
I want to keep an open mind about this, so I’m still planning to keep up with this game. All we can really do is see what Disney has in store for us 😛 knowing them, they’ll probably surprise us in the future.

That’s the kind of stuff I’ve been talking about! The basics; Puffles, Igloos, EPF, Card-Jitsu, etc. I see where you’re coming from, but honestly they could have just called this a Public Beta while they’re working on this stuff.

By the way, I’m not the only one locked out of my account, right? Like, putting in the correct login information and getting an error? (It still tells me if the password is incorrect, so I already confirmed that to not be the issue)

This is an account I know used to work, and holds my penguin with the pre-registration items, so as you can imagine, I’m pretty mad about this.
I do have an alt with the items, but I want my main account considering the progress I made on it when I was a member.

Seeing the reviews so split up bothers me too, obviously the people who downloaded CPI and left negative reviews didn’t know what they were signing up for… it reflects very poorly on the club penguin community